This is apparently a “Special Edition” magazine aimed entirely at GIMP and using it. As such, it’s mostly (unlike my blog) ad free. So that means there’s over 100+ (full color) pages of good content!

It’s broken down nicely by sections:

Get Started

Compiling GIMP

GIMP 2.8 and 2.9

User Interfaces

Settings

Basic Functions

Highlights

Basic Functions

Colors

Light and Shadow

Animation with GIMP

Practice

Layers

Selection

Colors

Paths

Text and Logos

Photo Processing

Sharpening

Light and Shadow

Retouch

GIMP Maps

Know How

G’MIC

UFRaw

Painting

Fine Art HDR Processing

Animation with GIMP

The sections appear well written and are clearly laid out. They cover external resources where it makes sense as well (referencing the GIMP Registry quite a few times for some of the more useful and popular scripts).

As an image editing program, GIMP provides a variety of useful and advanced functions for any possible task. Before you use them, however, you should be aware of some simple things.
Get Started: Basic Functions

The writing is nice and clear, and there is a good range of topics covered that should get most beginners on track for exploring further in GIMP.

For example, in the “Photo Processing” section, while discussing Sharpening an image, they make mention of most of what users are likely to need (and some more obscure ones): Standard Sharpening, Unsharp Mask, High-Pass Sharpening, Wavelet Sharpen, and more.

The instructions are clearly presented, and having all full-color pages really helps as there are many examples showing the concepts. There’s also some neat coverage of associated/support programs as well like G’MIC, UFRaw, and LuminanceHDR!

There’s a bundled DVD included that will boot to ArtistX linux as well (and includes GIMP install files for OSX/Win).

All in all, quite a bit of content for $15.99.

To sweeten the deal, the nice folks at LinuxPro Magazine are offering a discount code to save 20% off the price!

The discount code is: GIMP20DISCOUNT and it’ll be valid through July 15th.